About Us

Pennsylvania’s largest union for health care workers

SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania is the state’s largest and fastest growing union of nurses and health care workers, uniting nearly 45,000 nurses, professional and technical employees, direct care workers, and service employees in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home and community-based services, and state facilities across the Commonwealth.

Together, we work to protect patient care, expand access to quality health care for all, and to lives of health care workers. We accomplish these goals by organizing non-union health care workers, driving industry standards in our contracts and fighting for legislation that affects health care in our state.

8 Responses to “About Us”

Well it is time to comment and politely disagree with much of this
site. My wife and I have never had health insurance and DON”T want it.
Insurance is what makes medical care way overpriced – because it is
always there to pay. We will not join Obamacare either. We work on our
health and pay cash for our basic occasional care. We also do not
believe in labor unions. We have never been in one and resent paying
high taxes to support them and their fat pensions when we do not get the
same. We must pay yet only depend on our own savings for our future –
not fair at all. We have lived modestly and well below our means for over 30 years, invested carefully and have spent just a few hundred dollars in our entire lives on our health care. We also don’t buy insurance because we resent indirectly paying for people’s bad health choices that increase their risk of costly care when we do not practice such habits. We need to eliminate employers from having to pay for benefits and instead go to a simple, affordable single payer system.

Jskbt60-
You are very independent and that should be commended. I was just wondering – do you have auto insurance? And what do think it would cost if it was not legally mandated and you were also paying for all those who incurred liability, had no insurance or the means to pay for whatever harm or injury they were responsible for?
I hope your relative good health and fortune continues indefinately, but I’d feel much better about your future if hope was not such a mojor component of your plans.

Yes, of course I have car insurance as like you I am driving a killer weapon when behind the wheel though in 37 years of driving NEVER been in one accident that is my fault. But this is the ONLY insurance in our lives and boy do we live well on jobs having paid under $10 an hour! The medical system will never come back down like it was in 1970 even indexed to inflation as long as there is a third party payer so the only way other than to stay healthy and not use it is to not buy insurance, legally tie up your assets so they can’t take them and pay REASONABLY if you do have a significant medical cost. Perhaps we should all pay a modest tax for health care but certainly not $100s a month.

Guess that means you have never had to face the direct cost of the birth of your child, a child born or diagnosed with type 1 juvenile diabetes. Put it this way, had my family not had the type of insurance you seem to despise so much my ten year old, through no fault of his own, could be dead today had he not been fully covered (bill exceeded 60k for 3 days of care) and cared for at one of the children’s hospitals in the country.

Your bill like all medical bills was absurdly inflated because they knew you had insurance. We must get away from having a third party payer and get back to cash. Just imagine having “grocery insurance” so you could buy $600 of food at the store for a $20 copayment? This is the same principle. Food companies and grocery retailers would keep prices as high as possible because they know insurance will pay. We must get rid of insurance to bring down the health care system. Besides we have earned between $3 and $10 an hour most of our marriage and never would have gotten where we are now if we had thrown away $ on insurance we never needed. Obamacare means even more insurance for the system to play with and overcharge people.

What is scary about your comments is that you sound like you’ve done the homework and know what you’re talking about. Sadly though, you are quite clueless. No matter how well your wife and you “take care of yourselves” there is a potential for devastating medical conditions. I hope that neither of you you develop cardiac issues (many healthy people do; you know genetics and all that pesky reality), cancer (a disease that is nondiscriminating in choosing it’s victims) or any of the other myriad of health problems that we ALL face.
Have you even considered long term care? When your wife or yourself develop dementia and the other is unable to provide the around the clock care that is necessary how do you propose to pay for the facility stay? Surely you are not going to me using (GASP) Medicare. After all, it is insurance. I wouldn’t want you to compromise your principles……..

(I realize that these comments are a year old. I just had to reply to this nonsense though. His opinions are offensive to my sensibilities.)